I have spent 20 years working in nonprofit think tanks, the last 13 as a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas. I also ran the Washington, D.C.-based Council for Affordable Health Insurance for nearly nine years. While I cover a range of political, economic and policy areas, I specialize in health policy. Prior to joining the think tanks, I taught philosophy. I received all three of my degrees—BBA in economics, masters in divinity and Ph.D. in humanities—from Texas universities. I was an ethicist for a medical school's panel reviewing human experimentation. I'm a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Texas Advisory Committee. For several years I was a political analyst for the USA Radio Network, and I hold a 6th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and still teach.

The Era Of Big Government Is Back!

In his State of the Union speech on January 23, 1996, President Bill Clinton famously proclaimed, “The era of big government is over.” If anything is clear from the Obama victory, it is that the era of big government is back.

While the pundits pour over the voter turnout results and parse their meaning for Republicans and future elections, there is at least one common thread uniting all of those who voted for President Obama: They all believe in big-government handouts and bailouts.

It’s more than just the nanny state, it’s the sugar daddy state.

More so than race or gender, the biggest divide in the country may be those who embrace the government as sugar daddy, versus those who don’t. Obama’s whole campaign was based on handouts and bailouts. While Governor Mitt Romney tried to maintain his focus on the economy, Obama stressed how much he had given away—and would give away if reelected.

In Michigan and Ohio the president wanted voters to know that he came to the rescue of the auto industry—though for some reason he didn’t blame George W. Bush, who actually initiated the first bailouts.

While Romney tried to talk about getting the government out of health care, Obama wanted to make sure women knew that he provided them with free contraceptives.

While Romney tried to talk about block-granting Medicaid to the states as a way to get control of its unsustainable growth trend, Obama scared many low-income people into thinking they would lose their health insurance.

While Romney talked about reining in federal spending, Obama talked about “investing” in even more Solyndras and shovel-ready projects that aren’t quite shovel ready.

And as Romney talked about growing the private sector rather than the public sector, Obama called for creating hundreds of thousands of additional government jobs, most of which would be union jobs dependent on taxpayer dollars.

Turning President Kennedy’s famous inauguration dictum on its head, Obama’s campaign theme was, “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you.” The government—federal, state and local—is doing a lot to for people, and Obama wants to do even more.

Currently, nearly half of the population lives in a household where someone receives some benefit from the government. Of course, many of those are seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare.

Although Social Security and Medicare are financially unsustainable entitlement programs, no one I know on the right considers those seniors as “takers,” to use Romney’s unfortunate word when he referred to the “47 percent.” They paid into the system for decades and they, rightly, believe they should receive the benefits.

Besides Obama’s boasts that he gave seniors more free stuff in Medicare, he simultaneously tried to scare seniors that Romney would take away what they have. It didn’t work. Exit polling showed that seniors age 65+ voted for Romney by 12 points, 56 percent to 44 percent.

Aside: Seniors turned out for Romney in a larger percentage than women turned out for Obama (though only by 1 percentage point). Have you seen any handwringing stories in the media about how Democrats are losing the senior vote in the same way they gloat about how Republicans are losing the women’s vote?

The bigger problem we face was highlighted recently in a Congressional Research Service paper. The federal government spent about $746 billion on means-tested welfare programs in 2011. When state spending is added in, that amount rises to over $1 trillion.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 27 percent of all households received means-tested welfare benefits in 2011. While some may have voted for Romney, I suspect that 85 percent to 90 percent of welfare recipients voted for Obama. (For example, exit polls showed that 63 percent of those making under $30,000 a year voted for Obama.)

In addition, union workers—many of whom think they have a right to expensive, government-funded health care and generous pensions (just Governor Scott Walker)—make up about 12 percent of the workforce, and they strongly supported Obama. Combine welfare recipients and union workers and you have about 39 percent of households.

And what percentage of voters self-identified as Democrats in this election? Thirty-eight percent.

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Indeed, Bclevy, and the irony is that that in losing, the third party can draw off just enough votes to make might would have been the winner into just another loser. It doesn’t happen all that often, but it does happen.

IF the Democrats were to drive their LIBERAL principles of individual freedom along the Republican’s path of fiscal and monetary CONSERVATIVE policies, the result would yield the Libertarian party’s ideals and values.

Sadly, the republic has been inflicted with a chronic, internal disease perpetuated by the conflicting words and deeds of both the D and R parties that has resulted in perpetual growth of regulations coupled with the perpetual growth of debt that will guarantee economic turmoil for years to come.

We all pay taxes. Even people who now rely on government for food assistance because they are out of work “paid into the system.” Just because there’s a line on your check for social security and medicare doesn’t mean that everything else that falls under “taxes” goes to someone other than yourself. Taxes are designed to sustain civilization. Clearly people who could work before, got laid off, and can’t get a job now are capable of working. Joining a government program isn’t like being initiated into a cult. Life doesn’t get better, it’s just maintainable. Even a minimum wage full-time worker who earns $15,080 per year is ineligible for food assistance. If someone who earns $30,000 loses their job, government support isn’t a more desirable lifestyle. Yes, people want support to survive in hard times, but the support they are getting isn’t free luxury.

But, Jacob, there is a fundamental shift going on. First, half of the American people are getting some kind of financial support from the federal government–and the number is growing. Meanwhile the baby boomers are retiring at 10,000 per day, going from net payers to net recipients. The demographics are unsustainable. You can read my broader discussion of it “The Coming Entitlements Cliff.” Just google it and you will find it. Second, there is a change in attitude. People used to be proud of the fact that they had never taken government money )Social Security and Medicare accepted, because people see that as their on savings being returned to them). Increasingly, people no only don’t see accepting government money as an admission of failure, they think they have a right to it and ought to get their share. That type of attitude, one encouraged by many Democrats, is unsustainable.

I read the article you suggested. I think the difference in opinion I have isn’t about the trends or that they need to be somehow changed, but that they address needs created by an economy that people don’t know how to navigate. People who had jobs before don’t suddenly hate working, they just don’t know how to make money otherwise.

I appreciate your approval of assistance to “a small number of the poorest Americans,” and I assume that includes people with significant disabilities. This is the demographic I think that democrats are concerned about, and republicans really haven’t driven the point that they too understand that there are indeed people who have terrible circumstances that shouldn’t be ignored.

People do fall off another cliff of sorts – homelessness for example. Schools, along with the majority of families, haven’t taught kids survival skills or entrepreneurial skills. Those skills aren’t required when jobs are available. Rather than throwing money at education, I think there should be better curriculum.

I think the resentment and disparity of the rich versus the poor is that really we need to acknowledge that we are all in the same economy and same society, and as a result, in this together. Who are the consumers? Who are the low wage retail chain employees? The rich are getting taxed on money that came from working people with less. Knowledge and values need to be taught. Monetary incentive isn’t the language, nor is shame. Those things don’t make people respect each other.

A handout becomes something else when the responsibility you were taught is only applicable in a system that fell apart. Not getting a job that you would have been hired for 5 years prior doesn’t feel like your own fault, it feels like somebody else’s fault. When that job was available for you, the handout was something that you didn’t want. When you feel like irresponsible banks are responsible for that disappearance of opportunity, you don’t feel too bad about the banks being forced to pay you money. Unfortunately, the wealthy aren’t just those banks and the concept of justice shifts from self to universal. You lost your job through no fault of your own, and now money is going to come from a source that isn’t directly accountable to you. Shame in handouts? Not too much after seeing how that bank saw an opportunity to loan money to an ignorant and incapable borrower. The whole concept on welfare shifts. You don’t even feel the same as those recipients you used to disdain. And even those “lazy people” might be even more ill equipped for success than you are, and have even more resentments. Suddenly we’re in this together, there’s only one economy.

The fear is that republican solutions won’t fix the economy. Democrat solutions might sound equally implausible, but if you are the person who needs help, you’re going to want that safety net. Government paying people won’t sustain itself. Lowering taxes won’t make people more charitable. If we want to rely less on government we’re going to have to fix this ourselves, and when we’re fighting over values, it’s really not about the money at all.

I have food support. I stopped using it for a period of time for those same old fashion reasons of not wanting a handout, but ultimately felt I needed it again. I still use coupons and price compare, and have a surplus of available funds that I have no intention of using. My vote for President Obama wasn’t to ensure that I had that option. I certainly could survive, more miserably, without it. Nor was it a belief that Obama would get me a job. If the ballot options just said “Food Support” and “Job,” I’d certainly choose the job. But, I do need health care and there is also a poorer demographic out there and there are also children. I know where we’re more likely to get that. Throw in the religious intrusions of the Republican party, and I have another reason not to support it. Republicans should be allowed to dissent, and under the current GOP alliance, they aren’t.

A lot of those votes for Obama and democratic senators didn’t come from people who felt entitled to money. And there’s plenty of democrats (perhaps even the president?) who think things like deleting student loan debt is ridiculous. There’s restraint toward how much socialism we actually do want. My advice to a waning republican party is to drop the gay thing, drop the abortion thing, drop the God thing, and become libertarian. Then, drop the insults, and replace it with teaching people how to fish. Do that, and democrats will have to drop their own insults and come up with better solutions in order to compete.

Did the era of big government ever go away? From all that I have seen, government just gets bigger and bigger. Now its 40% of the US economy and growing, especially in those economic wrecks known as New York and California.

Jacob: The policy challenge is how to set up a program that provides for those who need help without creating incentives for people who don’t to take advantage of the system. And there is a big difference between conservatives and liberals over where one draws that line. For example, Obamacare provides subsidies for people making up to 400% of the federal poverty line. Thats $99,200 for a family of four. Conservatives would have gladly supported, say, 200% or 250% of FPL. But all of us thought providing tax subsidies up to 400% was too high. As a presidential candidate, Hillary wanted to go to 500%. But the biggest problem I am trying to address is the growing entitlement mentality. Obamacare provides free contraceptives to any woman, regardless of income. And their defense was that it is unfair for a woman to have to pay anything for them. That is very bad policy and sets up all the wrong economic incentives. But that mentality is growing in the country.

It’s a very good question, economart. No, it has never gone away. Of course, it was Clinton who said it was over. But Clinton told the public a lot of things that weren’t true. At least Republicans talked about shrinking the size of government. The problem is that once they controlled Congress and the White House, they grew it also. I do think, however, there was a time when most people were proud that they had never taken money from the government (a repairman at my house made that exact claim a few weeks ago). But that mentality seems to be fading, as people increasingly think being on the dole isn’t bad. It’s only a short step from there to the mentality that the government owes me a living and a good job and a nice place to live and health care. Oops, guess we are already there on that last point.